First 3 days

Day 1 went well. It's just a capsule. We mixed it into our daughter special winter treat - hot cocoa. She drank it up.  I thought she didn't even notice.. boy I was wrong. She asked me later in the afternoon if I added anything into her cocoa. I told her it was "baby yogurt"... It's tough to have a 3.5 year old comply with a treatment. It's an interesting age where they are much more aware of the others than we think.  It's a vicious circle as eczema doesn't like stress and how can you eliminate stress when you know you are different. When you go to a friend's birthday party, all ate cake, you don't - even though we smooth it out as much as possible by bringing a cupcake / treat she can eat... it's not easy...

Day 2 went better than expected. She asked for the powder to be mixed into her morning smoothie.. wow, it was a relief indeed. My only worry is it won't last long as we need to up the dosage every day and soon it won't taste good.

Day 3 has been more of a challenge. Smoothie didn't do the trick today. She didn't drink it all, but at least more than half. We also had to start the creams today. That went well, once again beginners luck, and it's only to the ankle today. Fingers crossed it won't be too bad.  Bath additives were supposed to start today too, but she was too itchy to try.  We'll start tomorrow, forcing it will only backfire. One step at a time. This is not a sprint but a marathon.

New Hope

The journey continues. We've been waiting for this appointment for about six months. We were quite fortunate that our allergist has connected us with Dr. Li and she took our daughter as her patient.

This link gives some background on Dr. Li and her breakthrough allergy research:

http://asthmaallergieschildren.com/traditional-chinese-medicine/

Dr. Xiu-Min Li has been named the recipient of the 2016 Future of Health Technology Award for her research and clinical work on botanical drugs for asthma, food allergies, and other diseases of the immune system, and for her vision to make them available to patients through integrative medical practice. The award will be presented on May 2, 2016, during the 20th Anniversary Future of Health Technology Summit™ at the MIT Media Laboratory in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA.” (Previous winners include Dr. Marvin Minsky and Dr. Raymond Kurzweil)

Allergies are a mixed bag, there are always good news and bad news. Good news is that there is hope to get the Ige levels down. The bad news is it will take years. They are high and getting higher every year.

Dr. Li talked about the cell memory multiplication and the worsening of Iges due to prolonged steroid cream use to keep the eczema at bay.  So here we are committing to start a new journey. A journey where we hope to achieve the first milestone of phasing out the steroids in the next six months, before we start tackling the allergies.

It's always great to meet the other parents in the waiting room. You know it's intense, when we all exchange our total Ige levels as we connect - 3k, 5k.... odd talk to those who are not in it day in and day out, but very real for all of us.

This new journey is not going to be easy, I pray that there will be no adverse reaction to the treatment and we can actually go through with it.

It's not a walk in the park. We have a set of capsules to be taken internally, we have a set of creams, bath additives and it's not a one time thing. We drafted up a treatment schedule for full clarity of administration of these elements. This is intense, the most intense routine we have yet had to do!

Fingers crossed, it'll work!

Auvi-Q Recall

If you're one of the Auvi-Q epipen holders, please get it replaced with another product and follow instructions below to get a refund for the difference in cost.

https://www.auvi-q.com/

Replacement and Reimbursement Process:

https://www.auvi-q.com/recall-return-and-reimbursement-process

We've got replacements in and requested the return package. Hope this will be a smooth process!